


Christmas Ball

by SzonKlin



Series: Halcyon [9]
Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SzonKlin/pseuds/SzonKlin
Summary: The people of the Halcyon start a new Christmas tradition a year after the bomb.





	Christmas Ball

Since the first time The Halcyon first opened, there was no grand society event on Christmas Eve of 1941. In fact, for the whole day the hotel was closed for the general public.

But it was by no means abandoned, and from the commotion inside one would hardly notice that the only people bustling about were staying guests, the family and the staff.

The male servants set up giant pinetrees, while the female staff wove fairy lights, evergreen branches, and colourful ribbons on all available surfaces. The young Lady Hamilton crafted delicate flower arrangements, Lord and Mr. Hamilton carried crates of decorations wherever they were needed and even the old Lady Hamilton was working hard on not only coordinating the decorating but joining in as well.

The Sonny Sullivan Band, that kept the name in honour of their late leader, provided entertainment as they practiced their songs for the evening. The melodious voice of the new singer brought tears to the eyes of most people when they stopped to listen, thinking of a voice that left them almost a year ago. From time and again some of the guests or of the staff joined in for a song, as almost everyone planned to join in on the entertainment in the evening to give the musicians a little break and to contribute to the spirit of the Christmas Eve Ball.

Because in 1941 the Ball was to be unlike anything that was seen in the illustrious hotel before. After another year of grief and pain and war, a year where everyone worked together to rebuild the Halcyon and keep people’s spirits up, Lady Hamilton decided to revive the old tradition of the Servants’ Ball from her childhood. This year on Christmas Eve the family and the staff were to celebrate together.

Lady Hamilton looked around the lounge. Despite the many differences it reminded her of two events from the previous year. The stiff celebration of Freddie’s assignment with the RAF and the tragic birthday of the hotel. These tree events had only one thing in common, her enjoyment of them were al overshadowed by the three loves of her life.

She only paid a passing thought to Lord Hamilton, the man she was instructed to fell in love with at 16, the man who promised her wealth, position, and family, he man who never thought of her again after their sons were born. That pain was long gone, overshadowed by all the suffering of the one and a half years since his death. But the pain of Mr. D’Abberville’s betrayal still stung sometimes. Lady Hamilton could still recall the freedom she felt when she fell for the man she wasn’t supposed to love. A foreigner, a commoner. A man who, at least so she thought at first, loved her for herself.

Sometimes, more often now that they were coming up on the anniversary, Lady Hamilton still woke up seeing the blood on her hands. Sometimes when she watched her son, the threat still rung in her ears. _‘Even if you continue to wilfully ignore the sordid details of your son's wretched private life... he's still a traitor. And if I go down, Priscilla, that boy is going with me!’_

The sound of a fortunately empty crate dropping pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked around the lounge again, surveying her newest, truest love, the one that wouldn’t let her down because she never expected anything in the first place. On the night of the bomb, her shock over D’Abberville’s death prevented her from properly seeing the damage and she hardly paid a thought to the apparent destruction of the hotel as she was taken to the Savoy for the night. But when she returned to the Halcyon the next morning, and she saw the rubble and the smoke and the dead bodies that were still there, and most importantly all the people still working on the rescue of people and valuables, who seemed to have been working without pause for the past twelve hours, she knew what she had to do.

Lady Hamilton promised then and there that she would do everything in her power to rebuild the Halcyon. Once upon a time she saw the hotel as one of Lord Hamilton’s mistresses, something that was far more important than his family. It was no longer a mistress, it became a home. It was evident in the long-term guests, who had no obligation to the place beyond paying their bills, the staff that couldn’t have hoped to be paid after such destruction, and even her sons who had just as many reasons to hate the place as she did and who could have just as easily spent a night at the Savoy, all working tirelessly among the ruins, side by side, regardless of status. Because that night they were no aristocrats and servants, rich people and commoners, they were just people whose lives were turned upside down in a matter of minutes, people who all lost friends and loved ones in the collapse.

With the walls of the hotel, the previously insurmountable divide between the two groups had also fallen and Lady Hamilton made sure that the latter stayed down as they worked on the former. Within a few weeks they restored enough rooms that the guests could return, and the hotel could operate well enough that the part of the staff that survived and decided to stay on could work and by May, the Halcyon reopened its doors.

The first event of the new Halcyon could also be seen as the sign of this new unity by those who were privy to the workings of the hotel as it was the wedding reception of Emma and Freddie. Some might have said it was sudden, after all they only started going out after the bomb, but they have known and loved each other all their lives and it taken only one shared look on that awful night to know that despite all their heroic attempts at doing the right thing in the months prior, together or apart, neither of them could survive the loss of the other.

Emma smiled brightly at the ongoing preparations. She felt as proud as she did when she first organized an event on her own, and in her heart she felt that this Ball would turn out far better than the one a year ago. She knew now that had a bomb not fallen that night, the event till would have ended badly, with all the horrid secrets that were hidden then, though she didn’t even know about them all. But this time she didn’t plan it on her own, but she worked together with friends. Then everyone was lost in their own personal tragedy but this time everyone wanted to spend a happy evening together.

She laughed as she remembered another well-planned event where everything seemed to go wrong and still it turned out to be the happiest day of her life. Almost as long as she had known that she would marry Freddie, she knew that Betsey would be her maid of honour and her reluctance to find someone else to replace her dead friend in that role delayed the announcement of the wedding by weeks. When they finally set a date, it had to be rescheduled just a month before the planned day due to Freddie’s leave being moved. A day before the wedding, some important piece of intelligence was obtained by MI6, and Toby was called away to Bletchley Park, so O’Hara had to step in as Freddie’s best man. By then they had all become friends, Joe having accepted Emma’s decision before she even knew she made it. Among such difficulties the cake being turned over by Wellington barely even registered. Still, Emma had never been happier then when she fell asleep in Freddie’s arms as his wife.

She smoothed out her vest as she scanned the room for Freddie, her hands lingering just a fraction longer on her belly. This would be her last event for a while, she knew. She could see the joy her mother-in-law had in running the place and with her father still at the helm, Emma felt superfluous as the third member of the hotel management. It wasn’t as if she had no other things to do. She signed up for a course to become medically trained nurse. And her wifely duties were also bound to take up more of her time and energies soon. With these she knew she would keep busy for the next few years until her father would retire.

“What is my beautiful wife smiling about?” Freddie whispered in her ear as his arms sneaked around her from behind.

“I was just thinking about a surprise I have for you.”

“Is it my Christmas gift?” Despite having spent the last two years fighting in the cruellest war mankind had ever seen, Freddie still remained a child in some ways and his appreciation for Christmas was one of them.

“No,” Emma laughed, “but I will tell you about it on Christmas Day and it will make you very happy.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Before she could respond, Emma’s watchful eyes were caught by a blond head darting around the room at an alarming speed. “Careful, Dora!” she called out to her new sister.

The warning alerted Mr. Garland who pulled the energetic little girl aside only a moment before she could have tripped one of the waiters who was carrying around refreshments for the workers.

“What did I tell you about running around the hotel?” he asked.

“Sorry, papa,” Dora replied, and Mr. Garland’s heart swelled at the word. It wasn’t the first time she called him papa but it was still new enough to fill him with happiness. Due to her young age, it didn’t take long for the little girl to forge about her father who died while rescuing people after the bomb, especially since he had been absent from her life long before that. Peggy felt guilty sometimes, having found happiness so soon after her first husband died, but even if his reasons for the distance between them were noble, she knew she had lost him long before his death.

Mr. Garland didn’t waste much thought to that though. He was a man who knew what he wanted and even if he would have walked through fire for his loved ones, he would never let a stranger, much less the memory of a stranger, get in his way. And it didn’t matter that he loved Peggy with all his heart and Dora almost as much as Emma, Mr. Taylor was a stranger to him. And even if Mr. Taylor died saving the guests of the Halcyon, Mr. Garland had no qualms about marrying his widow eight months later.

A weaker man might have felt responsible, but Garland knew that the Germans bombed most of London on that night and in all likelihood, they would have hit the Halcyon with or without a small fire to act as their guidelight outside of the staff entrance.

“O’Hara!” Garland called out, noticing another danger threatening the Halcyon. “I reckon the bar staff can handle setting up the champagne table without your help. Please, stop pestering them and help Mr. Hamilton organize the tables.”

O’Hara jogged over to where Toby was moving the small tables and the surrounding chairs over to the sides to create a larger room for dancing, unwilling to anger Garland in case the rumoured open bar was not yet certain. But even if he wouldn’t have to worry about the free drinks, he knew he owed a lot to the family and the Halcyon’s managers and he tried repaying his debt by diligently and with minimal complaints – that were more about keeping up his uncaring façade that everyone saw through anyway than anything else – tending to any task dealt to him.

After the bomb the Hamiltons paid for his room at a smaller hotel where the Hamilton boys and some of the staff who lived at the hotel or whose homes were destroyed in the Second Great Fire of London – as that dreadful night became known – stayed until enough rooms were renovated for them to move back. Lady Hamilton stayed at the Savoy for that time, though she invited Emma to stay with her.

When a room became available for him at the Halcyon, Garland didn’t even invite him back, simply acted as if it was always understood that O’Hara would return to their previous arrangement. Yet somehow the bill for even the 2-pund-a-night fee kept getting lost and forgotten every month until Joe decided to put the new receptionist out of her misery and stop inquiring about it.

His situation only improved when a week before the staff was finally brought back up to snuff, complete with a new housekeeper – Mrs. Hobbs decided not to return after that night, and not many people could find it in themselves to mind – Ms. Callahan. The Welsh woman had a sharp eye for mistakes and an even sharper tongue when she found someone slacking, whether it was one of the maids under her charge or one of the long-term guests, such as Joe himself. With his apparent ack of self-preservation, O’Hara quickly found himself falling for Ms. Callahan and to his great relief and even grater surprise the quick-witted housekeeper returned his affections.

O’Hara worked quickly on with Toby as they all knew that soon the lounge had to be abandoned by all save for the old Lady Hamilton and a few of her secret helpers who would add the finishing touches before the party would start. But Joe never worked so hard that he wouldn’t be able to talk and so he tried to catch up with his friend. With Toby having moved out of the Halcyon a few months back and working more and more t the war office as well as the occasional assignments at Bletchley Park and Joe chasing stories and doing all sorts of volunteer works all over the city, they had little time to just sit down and chat over a glass of whiskey. Still, however much he enjoyed talking to his young friend, Joe decided to promptly get rid of him when he noticed Ms. Callahan heading their way.

“I can finish this p on my own, why don’t you go and see if your friends at the bar need your help?”

Toby welcomed the chance to move over to Adil without having to initiate it. They still had to be careful about hiding their relationship, even if it has gotten easier in the last year. As the separation between staff and family lessened, every Hamilton struck up different relations, the most obvious being Freddie marrying the assistant manager and the most surprising was the strong alliance between the old Lady Hamilton and Mr. Garland. Toby befriending the bar staff didn’t shock anyone, unlike the fact that he seemed to be drinking _less,_ but most people supposed that was due to his increasing responsibilities at work, while only a few knew that it was because of the strong and healthy relationship that bloomed between him and Adil in the last year.

When Toby revived Adil only to be sent away and he found the Halcyon in shambles a year ago he never would have thought they would get to this point. But the bomb worked in their favour in some ways. When Adil heard what happened the next day, the loss of his friend and the grief all around them, the terror before he learnt that the bomb dropped while Toby was at Adil’s flat and not after, drove Adil to seek Toby out and to try to mend the trust that was broken between them. In the chaos that followed in the first few days, no one questioned Toby’s story that Adil was at the hotel that night and his weakness was credited to that, so he was treated with all the other people hurt there. He was also provided with lodgings along with the others, and if anyone found it strange that Mr. Hamilton ended up sharing a room with a bartender, no one dared to ask to avoid appearing as if they questioned why Lord Hamilton was having a room of his own when everyone else shared.

From then on, Toby and Adil’s relationship steadily improved. By the time Toby got cleared to work on more highly classified cases at Bletchley in April, they could plan for any potential case of blackmail without any awkwardness. In another few months Toby moved out of the hotel and Adil moved with him under the pretence that he needed a new place after the bombing and he would look after Toby’s flat in exchange for a room. With D’Abberville’s words echoing in her head, Lady Hamilton agreed with wilfully feigned ignorance.

As he slowly made his way over to the bar – frequently interrupted by people giving out smaller tasks – Toby thought of the little Christmas celebration they had planned to have later that night once they got home and of the little box that he was going to give to his lover. The smile on his face must have been more telling than he thought, because Adil only glanced at him and asked, “Mr. Hamilton, could you give me a hand with the crates out back?”

Once they were alone in the back corridor Adil quickly pulled Toby into a small storage room they were very familiar with and as soon as the door was closed, he pushed Toby up against it and kissed him with a passion that was unchanged even after one and a half years together.

“You looked awfully happy out there,” Adil complained, a little out of breath when he pulled away after a few minutes of kissing. “I thought it was unfair and I had to even the field.”

“By all means.”

“Care to tell me what made you so happy?”

“Just thinking about how much things had changed in the last year. This time last year we were both broken and afraid and full of doubts. And the year before that thought I would never find my place in this world, always stuck in Freddie’s shadow. And tonight we will celebrate with our friends and family and then we will get to go home together. I have so much that I never would have thought possible and I don’t think I could be here if it weren’t for you. And,” Toby stopped as if he was trying to stop the torrent of words coming out of him mouth, “I wanted to tell you this at home, but I don’t think I can stop now. Adil, I love you so, so much! There is so much uncertainty in this life. A bomb could drop on either of us any second, we could get caught by someone who would use it against us, you could be drafted, or any other number of things could happen. But I do know for sure that as long as I am alive, I will always love you and I’ll always want to be with you. I know there aren’t many options for people like us, but I want to promise myself to you. I want to swear in front of as many of our friends as possible that I will always stay by your side. To be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. I prepared so much for tonight, but I can’t wait any longer. Adil Joshi, would you spend the rest of your life with me?”

Adil could barely remember how to breath, let alone speak as he stared at Toby, with tears in his eyes. His heart was bursting with pride as he listened to his lover. People often dismissed Toby as weak or cowardly but Adil knew the real Toby, the one who might not have been heroic in his everyday life, but never failed to do the right thing when it really mattered. The man who was terrified of speaking in front of strangers but was ready to claim their love in front of people who might shun them for it. The man who on some days could hardly carry the pain of his late father’s refusal, but eagerly took on as much of Adil’s burdens as Adil could share. And this man was there, promising to continue to do so for the rest of their lives and Adil couldn’t be happier.

But Adil’s silence scared Toby. “You don’t have to say anything now,” he rushed to say. “Or ever. Nothing has to change, you can forget I ever said anything.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Toby. I don’t think I could ever forget what you just said. And of course, I would! I do! I do want to spend the rest of our lives together. You are _it_ for me, Toby. I knew it when I first kissed you just a few feet from here and I know more and more each day. We had our struggles and I’m sure there’s more to come, but I know that anything would be easier if we faced it together.”

“I know it as well, Adil. I love you.”

“I love you too, Toby.”

All too soon, they heard O’Hara calling for Toby and they were summoned back to the lounge for the celebrations. Carols were sung, presents were exchanged, two dozen people dance and drank and ate together as if they did it every day but among them, nine people stood out. The old Lady Hamilton watched contently as four couples exchanged loving glances as the crowd shouted merry Christmas. She became who she was always meant to be. Someone who would protect love in all of its forms and her sons in the face of all adversity. As she resolved to make sure _both_ her sons knew that, she felt the last of her chains fall away and she was finally free from her husband.

**Author's Note:**

> Have a merry Christmas, and happy holidays!


End file.
